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Space Battleship Yamato
This year Marks 33 years since the battleship Yamato sank. In in memory of Yamato, which sank so abruptly, an animated film featuring a flying battleship Yamato was created, bringing its majestic form back to life. That was Space Battleship Yamato, which began airing on TV in 1974.
Space Battleship Yamato is now being produced as a completely new theatrical film and will be released in theaters during the summer holidays.
It’s been about two years since the TV broadcast ended, but the manga, novel, and records continue to sell, and fan letters pour in. There are also 5 to 7 fan clubs in Tokyo alone, each with about 60 members, and they even published their own fan magazines. The age range of these fans is not children, but mostly high school and college student students. They say Yamato is a bible of their youth.
Top portion: character guides. Bottom portion: highlight scenes. Middle portion: Nishizaki text.
Producer Yoshinobu Nisaki speaks
Drama
In the year 2199, Earth is contaminated with radiation from missiles sent from the planet Gamilas, and humanity is on the brink of extinction and just one year. Then a message arrives from the planet Iscandar in the far reaches of space, stating that there is a device to remove radiation. Simultaneously, blueprints for a Wave-Motion Engine are sent and installed on the battleship Yamato.
Under the command of Captain Juzo Okita, Susumu Kodai, Yuki Mori, Shima Daisuke, and the entire crew board the ship and set sale on a round-trip journey of 296,000 light years.
Production intention
I planned this story because I wanted to convey the awareness and dreams that we humans need to have most right now. Through the lives of men who never give up hope until the very end, and take on every challenge in order to achieve the goal of saving Earth, I wanted to say “Love is being human.“
Inspiration
While taking a bath at home with my child, I had a sudden inspiration. We were playing with a toy ship, and I thought it would be fun if the ship could fly in the sky. Not just an ordinary ship, but a battleship. If it’s a battleship, it has to be Yamato. Space Battleship Yamato. The title came first, and after discussions with Keisuke Fujikawa, who wrote the script this time, Eiichi Yamamoto, and Leiji Matsumoto, who is in charge of concept design, we created this drama.
Yamato
The main character of the movie is not Susunu Kodai or Juzo Okita, but Yamato itself. Yamato is not a conventional streamlined, sci-fi spaceship, but a modified version that retains the silhouette of the original Yamato without compromising it. For example, the famous triple main guns and secondary guns have been replaced with energy ray cannons instead of shells, the catapults have been retained for use as launchers for the Cosmo Zero, and so on.
The colors were struggle
While it’s common knowledge that anime colors are usually easy to produce, dozens of colors were created and tested to express the weight and size of Yamato, a massive block of iron, before the final colors were decided. The paint company that produced so many unused colors apparently suffered a huge loss.
Three-dimensional effect
Because the 3-D effect in the visuals was too detailed and made Yamato’s movements appeared bumpy, the background image and Yamato were filmed separately, and the 3-D effect was created using optical compositing, where the film is composed during development.
Realism of mecha
We all watched and studied the movie Battle of Britain to study mechanical movements. The missile firing scenes were based on footage from the Apollo program, and great care was taken to ensure that every firing scene and included recoil. As a result, it took triple the time and money of a typical anime production. Thanks to this, the catchphrase among professionals has become, “something like Space Battleship Yamato…”
AT RIGHT:
Top portion: Gamilas mecha. Bottom portion: product listings.
Fan club established
(Segment in black box, lower left corner)
Producer Nishizaki, who says there are about 20,000 passionate Yamato fans nationwide, who even created their own fan magazines, has taken this opportunity to establish a fan club and is waiting to hear from them across the country.